Voyatlas v1.5.0 is our biggest update yet. Until now, Voyatlas has been focused on helping you find the best places to see marine wildlife. With v1.5.0, we're allowing users to turn Voyatlas into a place where you can plan trips, log your wildlife sightings, and set wildlife sighting alerts to stay up to date with the latest sightings near you, or from around the world.
What's New in v1.5.0
This release introduces four major features: travel itineraries with a wildlife wishlist, journal entries, a community feed, and live wildlife sighting alerts. The sections below outline each one in detail.
Travel Itineraries with Wildlife Wishlist
Voyatlas now supports full trip planning directly within the app. Users can add tours, dive and snorkel spots, and destinations to an itinerary, then organise them day by day into a complete travel plan.
Itineraries are paired with a wildlife wishlist, which sets this feature apart from a standard planning tool. Users select the species they hope to encounter — such as whale sharks, manta rays, blue whales, or sea turtles — and Voyatlas cross-references each selection against the locations in the itinerary.
- Drag-and-drop planning: Build multi-day, multi-destination itineraries.
- Species matching: Identify which wishlist species each stop supports.
- Shareable: Send itineraries to travel companions or save them for future reference.
Journal Entries
Journal entries allow users to document wildlife sightings in detail. Each entry can include photographs, species identification, location, depth, conditions, and personal notes, and is pinned to its exact position on the map. Over time, this creates a visual record of every sighting logged by you and other users.
- Species tagging: Tag sightings against the full Voyatlas marine species catalog.
- Photo uploads: Attach images directly to each entry.
- Context capture: Record depth, visibility, weather, and time of day.
The Feed
The feed aggregates public journal entries from across the Voyatlas community, providing a real-time view of wildlife activity reported by divers, snorkelers, and whale watchers worldwide.
The feed can be filtered by destination, species, or followed users. Travellers preparing for an upcoming trip can review recent sightings from a specific region before departure, making it a practical research tool alongside the Voyatlas map.
- Global and local views: Browse the full worldwide feed or narrow to a single destination.
- Species filters: Display only sightings of selected species.
- Follow other users: Stay up to date with sightings from friends and contributors of interest.
- Map integration: Open any entry directly on the Voyatlas map.
Wildlife Sighting Alerts
Wildlife sighting alerts are configured manually by the user. Each alert is anchored to a chosen location and a defined radius around it, and is linked to one or more species of interest. Whenever a journal entry is logged within that radius and tags one of the selected species, the user receives a notification.
For example, a user preparing for a trip to Baja California Sur can set an alert covering a defined radius around Loreto for blue whales, and will be notified each time a community member logs a blue whale sighting within that area. Multiple alerts can be created to cover different destinations, species, and trip dates.
- User-defined: Alerts are created manually by the user, with full control over configuration.
- Location and radius: Each alert is anchored to a specific location and a chosen radius around it.
- Species selection: Alerts are linked to one or more species selected by the user.
- Journal-driven: Notifications are triggered when a journal entry within the radius tags a selected species.
Performance Improvements
v1.5.0 also delivers significant performance gains over the previous release. Key areas of the map rendering pipeline have been rewritten, data loading has been optimised, and bundle sizes have been reduced.
- Faster initial map load, particularly on slower network connections
- Smoother panning and zooming when displaying large numbers of tours and spots
- Improved response times for location and species search
- Lower memory usage during extended sessions
- Enhanced caching for near-instant return visits
Other Improvements
A number of smaller refinements have also been included in this release:
- Updated sidebar layout to accommodate itineraries and journal entries
- Profile overhaul to include a new profile page, and a new settings page
- Accessibility enhancements throughout the interface
- Various bug fixes and stability improvements
- and more...
Availability
Voyatlas v1.5.0 is available now. We can't wait for you to try it out!
